“Tonight’s telecast was a live television event wrought with emotion. Kanye West departed from the scripted comments that were prepared for him, and his opinions in no way represent the views of the networks. It would be most unfortunate if the efforts of the artists who participated tonight and the generosity of millions of Americans who are helping those in need are overshadowed by one person’s opinion.”

The American Red Cross is incredibly grateful for the support we’re receiving in the wake of the catastrophic events caused by Hurricane Katrina. We want to acknowledge the ongoing support of NBC-Universal, which aired a telethon tonight on behalf of the victims of this tragedy.

During the telecast, a controversial comment was made by one of the celebrities. We would like the American public to know that our support is unwavering, regardless of political circumstances. We are a neutral and impartial organization, and support disaster victims across the country regardless of race, class, color or creed. We cannot, and we do not endorse any comments of a political nature.

West may be Time’s “smartest man in pop music,” but he also happens to be a tinfoil-hat conspiracist who raps about how the government invented the AIDS virus and a petulant sore loser who delivered a tirade at the American Music Awards when he didn’t get a trophy.

NBC can’t say it wasn’t forewarned.

***1150pm EDT update: “Kanye West” already the 2nd most searched term at Technorati.

9:50am 9/3 update: The Kayne West video I originally linked to got hacked. Sincere apologies to everyone who got tricked into watching the wrong video. The link has now been corrected; the new video is courtesy of Crooks and Liars.

5pm 9/3 update: A footnote about the “hacked” video. Last night, I linked to the West video at Dan Riehl’s site after he e-mailed me a link to it. I hat-tipped him by name and thanked him by e-mail. He later sent me another e-mail, which I missed and did not find until this afternoon, requesting that I use a link to his post instead of the link to the video that he had sent. In the meantime, Riehl got mad about what he saw as insufficient credit to him, put the porn video up himself to replace the Kayne West video, and now accuses me of stealing his bandwidth. I regret that I missed his e-mail and am sorry he feels I didn’t credit him enough. I’m even sorrier that such an honest misunderstanding exposed my readers to the obscene video.

A note to other bloggers: In the future, if you do not want me to link to something on your site, please do not send me links and e-mails asking me to do so. Thank you.

10:20am 9/5 update: Dan Riehl has removed the post in which he accuses me of stealing his bandwidth. He also has written me the following e-mail complaining about the update I wrote above:

It’s unfortunate that you continue to leave this [my 5 pm 9/3 update] up after I have pulled the post and have not engaged Patterico and Wizbang, who seem intent on stirring things up on your behalf. I have chosen to let this go, not because I am wrong, but because no one in the blogoshphere benefits from silly fighting.

When I suggested I was not “credited” correctly, it dealt only with the fact that the only post of yours I saw on this subject had a link directly to the video – feeding to your site and not even a generic link to my web log – stating simply “hat tip Dan Riehl” in text-only. It was credited in such a manner as to not even acknowledge the video was obtained and also posted on another blog.

As near as I can tell from what you then did, it was simply to change the link from one direct feed to another after someone emailed you that I had changed the file name. It was only after that, that I then switched the file to a wmv with Saddam Hussein photoshopped into a European TV commercial, which was neither “obscene”, nor “pornography”, by any generally accepted community standard.

Now, if you are content to have it misrepresented as otherwise by leaving things as they are – there’s little I can do about that. But I would think you might have the decency to take down, or amend the erroneous parts of your update and leave the thing drop.

It would appear that not even discussing the matter is your chosen path as it has been 24 hours and you have not returned my phone call, or two emails. Fine. But I refuse to continue to be made out as the perpetrator of some silly misdeed, particularly when it is stated so inaccurately on your web log, Patterico’s and wizbang, and the bottom-line fact is that what you did was extraordinary, to say the least; particularly as nearly thirty other individual bloggers have now managed to link the post without the same error after having received the same communication from me.

So, do we have to do this silly dance wherein I post to clear the record up publicly, or would you prefer to simply amend your update, or remove it and let the issue end?

Sincerely,

Dan Riehl
www.riehlworldview.com

PS: For the record it would be a wonderful gesture were you to contact Patterico and Wizbang and tell them this was a simple misunderstanding and ask them to let it drop. But, I assume that is a lot to ask, and, frankly, is likely moot, as noone seems to be paying much attention to them in this regard, anyway.

I’m glad Dan is no longer blaming a hacker who “masked an email as though it came from me.” There was no hacker and no one sent me an e-mail pretending to be Dan.

I accept Dan’s statement that the video was not pornographic. I retract that part of my post (see edit above). I do not retract anything else I wrote, including my statement that the video was obscene. (Perhaps it is not considered obscene in Europe, but I can assure you that many of my readers considered it obscene.)

For the record, I want to reiterate that I used a link that Dan sent me; I credited Dan by name; and I sent him an e-mail thanking him. In retrospect, I now wish I had provided a link to Dan’s blog as well. Nevertheless, I do not think Dan’s subsequent behavior–changing the file to a raunchy video, publicly accusing me of stealing his bandwidth, blaming everything on a hacker, and pretending that someone e-mailed me in his name–reflects well on him.

Now, I trust we both agree that there are far more important things happening in the world right now.